A drama about how far an obsessional, domineering matriarch is prepared to go for her son, it picked up the top award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and has been the most successful film in his home country for the past 15 years.

‘I think the story is universal,’ says Netzer, who wrote the screenplay with Razvan Radulescu – best known here for black comedy The Death Of Mr Lazarescu.

‘Maybe Eastern European mothers are more dominating than in other places but when I travelled around the world to film festivals to promote it, lots of women told me they empathised with the main character.’

The pair had come together to work on a different project but soon changed plans. ‘We started telling each other stories about our mothers and discovered we had the same, dominating type, so we thought we’d make a film out of it,’ he says.

Netzer’s work forms part of the Romanian New Wave films that have been gaining international success in recent years but the director feels the country’s film-makers need more support.

Bogdan Dumitrache in Child’s Pose (Picture: Capital Pictures)

‘The New Wave is a very good ambassador for Romania but the funding available for film-making has been going down in the past few years, so there are fewer films being produced.’

Child’s Pose had a tiny budget, allowing just 30 days of filming. ‘It was very difficult, we worked 14 to 15 hours a day and I would not do it again,’ says Netzer, who returned to his native country in 1994 – after a childhood in Germany away from Ceausescu’s communism – in order to attend film school there.

But he did get Luminita Gheorghiu – a household name in Romania – to play the monstrous, upper-class mother who tries to use her influence to help her son escape the consequences of a fatal car accident. ‘This was a new type of role for her and it was difficult for her to play this high-society lady,’ says Netzer.

Class was key in the film. ‘I decided to place the story in this social class because I think this sort of relationship is more often found in the higher classes,’ he says.

And the film’s name? ‘It’s the most simple yoga position, which you can get into when you’re stressed,’ says Netzer. ‘But the title in Romanian means a lot of other things; for example, the child’s position in their relationship with their parents.’